NATO Occupies European Skies With Biggest Drills Since Cold War

The US Army in Germany said the drills, in which nearly 5,000 soldiers will take part over four weeks, are the biggest held in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

NATO has launched the largest airborne drills since the end of the Cold War, the US Army announced on Tuesday, with more than 4,800 troops from 11 NATO member states set to take part in four weeks of exercises across Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Romania.

"Swift Response 15 is the largest Allied airborne training event on the continent since the end of the Cold War," announced the US Army, based in Grafenwohr in southern Germany.

Soldiers from Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the UK and the United States are taking part in the exercise, which marks the return to Europe of the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division for the first time since it was sent to carry out operations in Kosovo in 1999. 

The aim of the drills is to increase the capabilities of NATO's "high-readiness forces" based in Europe, and also to "demonstrate the alliance's capacity to rapidly deploy and operate in support of maintaining a strong and secure Europe," said the US army statement.

The US Army stated that the high point of the drills, which will continue until September 13, will be maneuvers on August 26 held at the Novo Selo military base in Bulgaria, and at the Hohenfels training area in Germany, where more than 1,000 paratroopers and equipment will be dropped by NATO warplanes.

As well as the airborne training this month, on Tuesday RIA Novosti reported NATO plans to carry out large-scale naval training September 12-22 in the Ionian Sea, under the codename 'Dynamic Manta,' which intends to coordinate air, surface, and subsurface assets for training in anti-submarine warfare.

Last week a NATO military spokesperson responded to concerns about its increasing militarization in eastern Europe, describing all NATO military activities as "proportionate, defensive, and fully in line with our international commitments." 

In addition to this summer's airborne and naval drills by NATO members in Eastern Europe, NATO has also expanded the scale and strength of its military exercises in Ukraine, which the Russian Foreign Ministry called a "graphic demonstration of NATO’s provocative course for giving unqualified support to the current Ukrainian authorities’ policies in southeastern Ukraine, which result in daily civilian deaths."

"NATO is not only unprepared to recognize the fallacy and possible explosive consequences of these drills, but has also boosted their scale and the strength of forces involved in comparison with last year’s exercises," said the Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement in July on the launch of US-led NATO military exercises for the Ukrainian army in Lvov.